Oracle Launches Billing, Revenue Management Cloud Service

By Nathan Eddy |
Posted 2013-09-25

Technology giant Oracle has unveiled Oracle Billing and Revenue Management Cloud Service at its annual OpenWorld Conference. The platform provides enterprises with a scalable billing solution to capture recurring revenues from new digital services.

The basic offering delivers a subscription-based model, supported by a feature capability for pricing, account management, billing and invoicing, posting to General Ledger and Accounts Receivable, taxation and payment gateway for credit card payments.

The financial accounting principle adopted is that of balance-forward accounting. The Premium Edition covers all the capabilities of the basic offering plus end-to-end support for usage charging and processing, spend controls, advanced discounting and open-item accounting.

The platform is designed to facilitate the creation and validation of new products, bundles and offers, helping to make it easier to define new products and make post-launch adjustments, and offers the functionality to support globalization of digital commerce across new and existing lines of business.

The service runs on the Oracle Cloud, which is designed to provide the product, support and services enterprises require to transition to the cloud, while delivering the security, compliance and operational requirements of the digital goods companies.

The billing service enables businesses offering digital services, including financial services and high-tech organizations, as well as media and entertainment providers, to deploy a revenue management system with predictable monthly operational costs and minimal capital expenses.

"We are excited to leverage our experience in high-volume and complex billing to offer our customers the flexibility of a cloud billing service with the reliability and security of an Oracle technology environment," Bhaskar Gorti, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications, said in a statement. "With this solution, customers across a wide range of transaction-heavy industries can quickly and easily innovate and monetize new and sophisticated product offerings and service bundles to help maintain a competitive edge, while also streamlining financial management."

Another feature is the ability to streamline tax computation with internal tax support or integration with third-party tools and financial reporting in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The Billing and Revenue Management Cloud Service also provides support for billing and invoicing functions, including trial offers, rebilling, bill corrections and flexible bill cycles, across multiple metrics, such as volume, time, transactions, events and downloads.

Finally, the platform supports low-risk adoption of new digital commerce initiatives by outsourcing billing and financial management functions to a vendor with an operating model and enhanced functionality, and reduces in-house maintenance and upgrade costs with automatic upgrades that maintain customizations.

"Enterprises are in search of a predictable cost infrastructure with an opportunity for investment in alignment with the customer’s growth strategy and business needs," a company whitepaper explained. "Adjustments to existing systems are required and powerful billing capabilities are essential to participate in subscription commerce and drive recurring revenue streams. Oracle Billing and Revenue Management Cloud Service meets customer needs by providing accelerated time to market, enabling growth by supporting multiple business entities, and lowering cost and risk."